Bonnie prince billy

First up, if you’ve been enjoying the Nick Cave business in the new issue of Uncut, something useful showed up on our Twitter feed the other day: a Spotify playlist of our Top 30 Cave tracks compiled by Wavey Davey 001. Thanks for that.

A bit of anal-retentive listmaking today: my favourite 30 albums of the year so far (though I imagine I’ve forgotten one or two, and there’ll be a bunch more good ones that I haven’t heard as yet).

As I maybe mentioned the other week, I’ll put some stuff up here soon about the whole ongoing Great Lost Albums thing. It also occurred this morning, though, that I should have a crack at a 2010 halftime Top 20 or 30, as I managed last year.

Very much enjoying the Blues Explosion comp and the Trembling Bells second, which I’ll endeavour to write about early next week, Also, yes, the Ariel Pink stuff is great in a generally unnerving way: one track I have reminds me powerfully of, well, Christopher Cross.

A few bits and pieces to mop up today, beginning with one last thankyou to everyone who has posted on the end of year blogs – or, come to that, who's commented on any of the things I’ve written in the past 12 months. It’s been a genuine pleasure to hear from almost all of you; and of course heartening to discover other people interested in the same music.

Previously: 100-81, 80-61

A message that one of the Uncut team, Bud Scoppa, had filed his Top 25 tracks of the last six months inspired me this morning to do something similar.

Some very satisfying words in album titles this week, if you’ll forgive the fairly tangential way of starting a blog: “Veckatimest”, “Bitte Orca”, and today, “Balf”. “Balf Quarry” is the new album from the Magik Markers – according to the sleevenotes, “A stone quarry in Hartford, CT which has mined traprock since the earliest days of the city.”

I have a default rant about the parlous state of most modern British folk which I wheel out here every couple of months or so. Jim Moray and Seth Lakeman are unfailingly indicted, and Alasdair Roberts is held up as the excellent exception which proves the rule. It’s nice, then, to be presented with a new Alasdair Roberts album, “Spoils”, to justify my prejudices.

Enchanting love letter to the first hippy of country, Mr Willie Nelson